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Return to Article: Watchdog says IRS unable to readily locate key files

• 34971
  

  I have been fighting a battle with the IRS for over 2 years very similar to the battle being waged by Mr. Parli. I have sent cancelled checks, registered mail receipt numbers, copies of all previous correspondence, and still receive statements indicating I owe them additional funds. I have even gone so far as to send in twice the amount the IRS said I owed, only to be told it was not sufficient to cover the entire bill once they found my file. I am also a Federal employee and if my recordkeeping was as shoddy as the IRS's, I am sure I would be told my services are no longer required. Where's Management?

  Lynn Irlmeier Posted October 16, 2007 12:36 AM
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  I used to work for the IRS and we had to be able to put our hands on any file we had in our possesion within a couple of days. Where we came into problems was when we sent a file to one entity withing the organization and they wouldn't receive any files in until their audit was done. This caused us to have files in limbo for at least a week until an audit was done. But we had to have a 100% accounting for our files.

  L J Posted October 15, 2007 5:52 PM
• 34917
  

  I have an ongoing battle with the IRS. Lost my payment for back taxes and I had to provide a copy of the canceled check and then it took them two more years to determine the amount owed; Penalty and interest continued to mount and we still have a disagreement over the penalty and interest. Can you help?

  Robert Parli Posted October 15, 2007 7:46 AM
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  My heart bleeds for the IRS. It is a corrupt agency who is finally getting what it deserves.

  Bev Fox Posted October 14, 2007 3:19 PM
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  I worked at IRS for many years, and I've worked at a other Government agencies as well. It is my experience that IRS' records practices are better than most agencies. This is not to say there are not problems, it's just if one is going to make a target of an agency for bad records management, IRS is pretty low on the target list. A lot of the problem has to do with how quickly one needs the records, their age, and whether one has to retreive them from off-site storage (which often takes a good deal of time and sometimes involves other agencies). If you keep the records local (and available), you get criticized for wasting premium space (and dollars). If the records have been in litigation or in demand by multiple offices -- sayonara. Managing the explosion of records in most agencies (both electronic and paper)by the old NARA rules is, for most agencies, a losing battle -- if they even try. IRS tries. Its basic processes are o.k.

  Frank Inserra Posted October 13, 2007 2:49 PM